Take the element of respect out of any relationship, and it immediately begins to disintegrate. It’s an idea so simple that we often walk right by it; respect for one another is key to any healthy relationship.

Books

The Meaning Of Marriage

Timothy Keller

Modern culture would have you believe that everyone has a soul mate; that romance is the most important part of a successful marriage; that your spouse is there to help you realize your potential; that marriage does not mean forever, but merely for now; and that starting over after a divorce is the best solution to seemingly intractable marriage issues. But these modern-day assumptions are wrong. Timothy Keller, with insights from Kathy, his wife of thirty-seven years, shows marriage to be a glorious relationship that is also misunderstood and mysterious. The Meaning of Marriage offers instruction on how to have a successful marriage, and is essential reading for anyone who wants to know God and love more deeply in this life.

Marriage On The Rock

Jimmy Evans

Society requires years of preparation for almost any significant career endeavor, but demands no preparation for one of the most crucial undertakings in life: marriage. In an age of disposable marriages and information overload, couples can only turn to one place for real answers that will make their relationship work—to God. Marriage on the Rock clearly details God’s principles that will strengthen good marriages and turn disillusioned, divorce-bound marriages into satisfying, dream relationships.

Love Talk

Drs. Les & Leslie Parrott

In Love Talk, the Parrott’s help readers discover their and their partners' communication style, and how the two can best interact. In this no-nonsense book, "psychobabble" is translated into easy-to-understand language that clearly teaches couples what they need to do—and not do—for healthy communication. Learn how to take your conversations to a deeper level and engage in the most important conversation you and your partner will ever have. Follow the deep yet simple plan prescribed in Love Talk and begin communicating your way into a happier, healthier, and stronger relationship.

Love & Respect

Dr. Emerson Eggerichs

Psychological studies affirm it, and the Bible has been saying it for ages. Cracking the communication code between husband and wife involves understanding one thing: that unconditional respect is as powerful for him as unconditional love is for her. It's the secret to marriage that every couple seeks!

The Creative Marriage

Ed & Lisa Young

Disposable relationships and throw-away marriages permeate our culture. When the dream fades and the realities of life set in, many just throw in the towel. In their book, The Creative Marriage: The Art of Keeping Your Love Alive, Ed and Lisa Young take a penetrating look at what it means to have a lasting marriage in today's world. After more than twenty years of marriage, Ed speaks openly and honestly about the hard work involved in a creative marriage and the lasting rewards of doing it God's way.

Sexperiment: 7 Days to Lasting Intimacy with Your Spouse

Ed & Lisa Young

The predominant message in our culture is that it's okay to have sex whenever, wherever, and however we want. Sex has become just sex. But while society has taken sex too far, the church hasn't taken it far enough. SEXPERIMENT shows people that sex in marriage is more than just sex, and it's more than a chore. The Young’s believe it's time to get back to understanding the context of sex in marriage and that it's time for couples to break the barriers keeping them from a healthy sexual relationship.

Boundaries in Marriage

Dr. Henry Cloud & Dr. John Townsend

Boundaries in Marriage show couples how to apply the 10 laws of boundaries that can make a real difference in relationships. They help husbands and wives understand the friction points or serious hurts and betrayals in their marriage—and move beyond them to the mutual care, respect, affirmation, and intimacy they both long for.

Scriptures

Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrong doing, but rejoices with the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

I Corinthians 13:4-7

Wives, submit to your own husbands, as to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife even as Christ is the head of the church, His body, and is Himself its Savior. Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit in everything to their husbands. Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave Himself up for her, that He might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of the water with the Word...

Ephesians 5:22-33

Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.

Genesis 2:24

Now concerning the matters about which you wrote: “It is good for a man not to have sexual relations with a woman.” But because of the temptation of sexual immorality, each man should have his own wife and each woman her own husband. The husband should give to his wife her conjugal rights, and likewise the wife to her husband. For the wife does not have authority over her own body, but the husband does. Likewise the husband does not have authority over his own body, but the wife does. Do not deprive one another, except perhaps by agreement for a limited time, that you may devote yourselves to prayer; but then come together again, so that Satan may not tempt you because of your lack of self-control.

I Corinthians 7:1-5

He who finds a wife finds a good thing and obtains favor from the Lord.

Proverbs 18:22

Let marriage be held in honor among all, and let the marriage bed be undefiled, for God will judge the sexually immoral and adulterous.

Hebrews 13:4

It is better to live in a corner of the housetop than in a house shared with a quarrelsome wife.

Proverbs 21:9

House and wealth are inherited from fathers, but a prudent wife is from the Lord.

Proverbs 19:14

Do not be unequally yoked together with unbelievers. For what partnership has righteousness with lawlessness? Or what fellowship has light with darkness?

II Corinthians 6:14

But I say to you that everyone who divorces his wife, except on the ground of sexual immorality, makes her commit adultery, and whoever marries a divorced woman commits adultery.

Matthew 5:32

To the rest I say (I, not the Lord) that if any brother has a wife who is an unbeliever, and she consents to live with him, he should not divorce her. If any woman has a husband who is an unbeliever, and he consents to live with her, she should not divorce him. For the unbelieving husband is made holy because of his wife, and the unbelieving wife is made holy because of her husband. Otherwise your children would be unclean, but as it is, they are holy. But if the unbelieving partner separates, let it be so. In such cases the brother or sister is not enslaved. God has called you to peace.

I Corinthians 7:12-15

Likewise, wives, be subject to your own husbands, so that even if some do not obey the word, they may be won without a word by the conduct of their wives, when they see your respectful and pure conduct. Do not let your adorning be external—the braiding of hair and the putting on of gold jewelry, or the clothing you wear— but let your adorning be the hidden person of the heart with the imperishable beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which in God's sight is very precious. For this is how the holy women who hoped in God used to adorn themselves, by submitting to their own husbands.

I Peter 3:1-11

And the rib that the Lord God had taken from the man he made into a woman and brought her to the man. Then the man said, This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man. Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh. And the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed.

Genesis 2:22-25

Let deacons each be the husband of one wife, managing their children and their own households well.

I Timothy 3:12

Knowing their thoughts, he said to them, Every kingdom divided against itself is laid waste, and no city or house divided against itself will stand.

Matthew 12:25

But from the beginning of creation, God made them male and female. Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh. So they are no longer two but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let no man separate.

Mark 10:6-9

When you make a vow to God, do not delay to pay it; For He has no pleasure in fools. Pay what you have vowed. Better not to vow than to vow and not pay.